Night Too Soon

For Ify Omalicha, prima ballerina

by Yomi Ogunsanya

It is night too soon in the house, and not time for matinée

The lead dancer’s feet have strayed beyond the geography of the stage

Beyond the arch and the orchestral pit, beyond the shadows of illusion

The lights are out, the drumming fingers are silenced mid-throb

Now others have lost the poetry of their feet, the grace of their movement, the energy

Of their dreams

And the curtain is drawn in mid act…

We shall have no curtain call, no savouring of the promised dance

Of the poetry and tales weaved into dreams, meshed into laughter

All too soon, and not a moment’s notice:

The song is trapped forever in her throat; the dance is poised, frozen in mid-air, our gazes calcified into surprise, into a cloud of rising dust

Then our leaden feet search for a path through the throng of silenced seats, the potsherd

Of broken promises, of work undone, and of dances that may have been done

If our feet shall dance together again

Let it not be where the roads meet—for there it lurks, another landmine

Waiting, famished

Let it not be in a limbo dance

For then we must re-enact better-forgotten passages

And nightmare on high seas

Let it be in a dance of life, enacted within the precinct of the stage:

A feast of return, to exorcise the ghosts that will haunt us still.

_______

Yomi Ogunsanya writes from Ibadan